Chavismo reshifting roles

 Now that we have a novel National Assembly, who is speaking for chavismo? (1)

One "surprise" is that Jorge Rodriguez is the new chair of the nNA. Well, not that much of a surprise since he was sent to run while he was occupying high positions inside the chavista nomenklatura. He has been mentioned enough in this blog so I will not review his extended life serving chavismo. From an alleged impartial electoral umpire in the early 2000 elections he ended up as Vice President of Chavez in the many positions he occupied. He, and his sister currently the vice president (2), are now the main operators of Maduro, sort of representing the civilian side of chavismo.

The end arriveth

Milton Friedman said something of the kind that were the Sahara to be ruled by communist the desert would run out of sand within a few years.

Well, it just happened in Venezuela, perhaps the first mega oil producer in history that has run out of gasoline.

And at the very possible worst time as we ran out of money, when Coronavirus stroke, when an ailing production is least able to suffer such a disaster.

Admittedly, referring to Friedman we are not sure anymore what is ruling in Venezuela. Communists? Socialists? Fascists of the XXI century?  For sure narcos. For that matter, we do not even know if someone is in charge, besides those organizing repression of course.

The political consequences were quickly seen.

The Venezuelan opposition reaches the deep end: part 1

There is a new crisis of "to vote or not to vote". And the opposition is falling into the same self destructive behaviors, opening the way for the final political push of chavismo. Which does not mean that Maduro will last, the economy is tanking. What I am talking about is a new self destruction episode of the opposition leaving no other option than a chavista replacing Maduro. Maybe.

Yet this time around the reasons are not the same, nor are the stakes as they happened in the last three elections.  The worse of the current mess is that we are already tearing each other over an election that not only has not been convoked but may never be.  Let's review the situation in this first installment, letting for the next one a possible opposition strategy that shall not happen.

What Josep Borrel really meant : a lost country

Spain had what is normal in a parliamentary system: there was a motion vote that ousted the sitting Mariano Rajoy which automatically replaced him with the "leader" of the opposition, Pedro Sanchez.  This one did not reach premiership after last elections since, well, he barely floated around a quater of the vote. But Spain is a country of instituions and Sanchez heads a ministry that is held in place in large part by the good will of very the leftist PODEMOS who is a big, bought, friend of chavismo.

The door opened again.
Borrel and Chavez son in law.

We need to understand this to interpret, in part only, the recent words of Josep Borrel, the new foreign office holder. He said during a meeting with Venezuela's foreign minister, the creep that got there because he married a Chavez daughter, that Spain will not spearhead sanctions against Venezuela anymore and that dialogue should be renewed [english].  Some in Venezuela interpret this as a success, some as a betrayal, both are wrong.

A way out for Venezuela: the regime options

What can the regime do at this point?

Since its sole wish is to remain in power to avoid jail, they have clear objectives. Unfortunately for them the strategy to reach them has to change almost daily as events seem to escape any sort of control.  Thus the regime sticks to three main lines and lets circumstances dictate adjustments.

Crimes against humanity

Since Maduro "reelection" nothing new happened. Or rather all that happened was previsible, except that it got worse for the regime. It was all a matter of timing. There were several international judicial decisions that were published last week. One may wonder why these were not announced before Maduro went to the ballot. What for? First, the result was known well in advance. Second, with most in the country having only access to the regime's media, the news would not have reached "el pueblo", who at any rate does not give a bit about anything anymore so busy it is scavenging for food.

No, what is going on is a continuous effort designed to topple a neo-totalitarian regime with as little blood shed as possible. I find this hypocritical. Not in the per se sense, but since blood shed is to be "avoided", or in my opinion postponed, meanwhile we have thousands of Venezuelans dead every week from violence, crime, poor nutrition, desperate lack of medicine, and what not. But that is of course much easier to hide from the world than a few dozen hysterical Palestinians with clear suicidal tendencies. I am just saying, since apparently "crimes against humanity" has become a relative concept at the UN.

Venezuela as a permanent problem

Now that all objective observers have concluded that this is a military narco kleptocracy, what are we going to do about it? This is keeping many people awake at night, but not enough of them. Andres Oppenheimer writes today a piece that underlines that dealing in Venezuela is an urgent matter, that times works in favor of Maduro.  He makes fair points and space limit probably did not allow him to develop. But that is where blogs come in handy.

Amazing mess, how sweet you are

This will be short and sweet. It may be a couple of days before I can post again.

I shall not vote: the ethical thing to do

Again, not that it matters to most readers or to the regime. But I thought that I should give a reasoned account on why I am not voting.

The simple reason is that the system is so screwed up that voting or not makes no difference.  It is not that I am still registered in San Felipe though now forced to live in Caracas and too lazy to drive. Even if I were back in San Felipe I would not vote.

Medicine for the rich, or how to postpone some genocide for a little while

So I had an event due to stress that had me hospitalized for two days and that will change a lot of my life. No details necessary, the stress under which I have been subjected for the last 4 years is the real explanation. But the damage is done and now I have to rebuild what I can from my old life with all the same problems as I had before. And even worse as my S.O. health is not doing better the more so that his support is not shipshape.

Dark options

I am writing this as I am listening to Górecki #3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs". You have been warned. (1)

Nothing like throwing in a little presidential election to distract folks

Today, without much a surprise besides the chutzpah temporary effect, the regime decided to call for presidential election by April 30.

I am not to go into the illegality of it all. At this point "legal" has probably been erased from the Venezuelan dictionary.  Just a comment: in Venezuela, like in the US, there is such a thing as fixed term mandate. That is, whoever is elected by April 30 (surprise, it will be Maduro!), cannot be sworn in until January 2019.

So why go into such a farce? That is what is interesting to discuss.

2017 round up: chavismo has not changed, and can't

It is necessary to repeat this over and over: the current Venezuelan regime CANNOT yield to a democratic transition. Its leadership is way too compromised in particularly obscene corruption to which you add drug trafficking big scale.  If they lose power these people will end up in jail, in Venezuela or outside.  Even if some sort of amnesty is pronounced as they know only too well that amnesties only last so long: see Pinochet, the Argentine army, etc...

Can Sakharov save the Venezuelan opposition?

No.

The day Ramos Allup drove the stake at the heart of the MUD

The July 16th vote, annulled today

Today's events remind me a little bit of that type of horror movie which starts with some bloody body(ies) and a mysterious shadow drifting away. Heck, sometime the alleged assassin is shown knife in hand. No matter, after this initial screen you read something like "2 weeks/days/hours earlier" over a background of happy cheerful people that you cannot warn about what is to befall on them. Thus you need to wait until the end of the movie to figure out who was the shadow or if the alleged assassin was just set up to look so.

Today Accion Democratica (AD) secretary Henry Ramos Allup (HRA) decided to have his 4 elected governors swear in front of the unconstitutional constitutional assembly (AC) and thus within a single hour he 1) legitimizes the AC 2) voids years of opposition (MUD) efforts 3) wrecks its unity and 4) creates an image overseas that there is no need to worry about Venezuela anymore, either it is a democracy after all, or the opposition is not worthy of rescue so let them deal with their own mess.

How did we come upon that political horror scene?

Back to early July 2017.

Trashed at Lima: Maduro goes from PR fail to PR fail

This is so whirlwind that I am going to write fast.

That is democracy for you

In the middle of the night the nazional guard and the constituent assembly chair took over the old senate chamber of Venezuelan Congress which had been transformed into a ceremonial room. The problem is that the hall is not big enough for the 550 constituents as it can hold barely 450.  But the point here is to piss off the National Assembly and slowly but surely edge them out of existence.

For good measure the National Assembly was barred to enter its chambers for its scheduled session, least the couple of dozens that did make it into congress house would attack the 500+ constitutionals.  Nice to see the nazional guard deployed in a legislative room. Nothing militaristic or repressive in the regime. No serreee...

From official terror to article 350 - 2) state terrorism reflects chavismo division

The murder yesterday of David Vallenilla hit a new low, and hit a rawer nerve in the population. Murder, yes, point blank shooting murder, as seen in video but not on TV that the regime censors.

El momento preciso en que un GNB dispara contra joven manifestante #EnVIVOplay por: https://t.co/AyLxbCohdr pic.twitter.com/M4MM5LS8S7

— VIVOplay (@vivoplaynet) June 22, 2017

From official terror to article 350 - 1) life in Caracas

Two and a half months of nearly continuous protests have passed. The only thing we can say for certain is that internal divisions of chavismo are being exposed, and that the country is falling apart.

Mix and shake

Living in Caracas is now an ordeal. You need to try to do your business either early in the morning or on Tuesdays and Thursdays, days with, in general, lower intensity protest. After all, you need to get food, work enough to make sure your business does not go under, take your SO to his weekly treatments, etc. It does not matter how much you would like to protest and beat up a Nazional Guard, you still need to attend some of the basic life needs.

Taking care of these needs have taken a nasty downward turn in these months.

Day first of dictatorship: the local fate

Well, folks, I never thought in my already long life that I would live in a country that has been officially declared a dictatorship.


And those are not my words, there those of many newspapers, countries and foreign dignitaries. As far as the civilized world is concerned Venezuela is now a dictatorship. Only creeps like Bolivia pretend it to be otherwise. But then again Bolivia is about to annul the referendum that Morales lost, so what would one expect...

And thus it came to pass: Venezuela's high court ends National Assembly's functions

Of course, this is not a surprise. The regime has been diligently eroding all functions of the Venezuelan National Assembly (NA). For this it has used the packing of the Venezuelan High Court (TSJ) in December 2015, just in the days between the election of a 2/3 dominated opposition NA, and its swearing in of January 2016. Since then a bevy of decisions without a single dissenting vote have been pronounced that ended up this Wednesday when a final decision declared that the TSJ will from now on assume all the duties of the NA while they refuse to obey the TSJ dictates.  This thus adds a new shade of meaning to "Damned if you do and dammed if you don´t".

For good measure last Tuesday the TSJ voided the parliamentary immunity of the NA, allowing the the regime to send representatives to military courts under accusation of high treason for supporting the OAS latest moves.

So that is that. What is next?